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4 Keys to 4K

With the 2nd Annual Art of Amazing 4K Film Competition underway, we wanted to take a moment and introduce you to last year’s winners, Rockhouse Motion, who wowed and won the hearts of our judges and fans with their winning submission Dr. Boom.

Rockhouse Motion is an elite task force, armed with a plethora of overpriced camera gear and a trio of overactive imaginations, and battle hardened from the flash and burn of tungstens and LEDs.

Alongside their grit, experience, talent, creativity, and ‘Braveheart extras’ appearances, this team has the gift of perspective, and as these paragraphs hopefully demonstrate, take their work much more seriously than they do themselves.

We asked these passionate filmmakers to share tips on how they have mastered the art of 4K filmmaking and what goes into ensuring all their work looks truly amazing from production to viewing. Here’s what they had to say…

4 Keys to 4K

By: Rockhouse Motion

With 4K technology, you can capture images in such incredible resolution, that it is a reality to consider each frame as a standalone photograph. When composing shots, it has been beneficial for us to think like photographers, with the goal being that if any of our work is paused, it simply looks like a beautiful, crisp photo hanging on the wall. 4K has allowed us to dig deeper into the nuances of each scene, letting the details tell the story and focusing on compositions that will allow our work to stand out.

One of the things we have enjoyed so much about 4K is filming things that people have seen dozens of times, but leveraging the technology to show it in a completely different way. Whether it is a fresh meal on a plate or a familiar urban skyline, this technology and the clarity in which it is shown has allowed us to revive some more familiar scenes portraying them in a new fashion.

For all of its benefits, 4K offers challenges in that it portrays scenes honestly, and can draw attention to sloppy make-up, lighting, and other effects. This has renewed our focus on creating and capturing genuine and authentic scenes, and honed our skills as cinematographers. For viewers, this is a great benefit because the films they are enjoying are much more organic and the work being done is of an ever increasing quality.

We are incredibly lucky to live and work in an era where display manufacturers and camera companies are pushing the envelope on the technologies we rely on and enjoy on a daily basis. Being able to have our work shown in this beautiful quality, and to offer viewers total immersion into a scene is a rare and unique opportunity, something that our predecessors didn’t have the luxury of benefitting from. Be sure to take the time to enjoy your work on a display that truly showcases its quality; it was something that we hadn’t taken the time to do until recently. Once we did see our work on a 70” AQUOS 4K LED TV, it not only changed the way we worked, but also made us truly appreciate what we are capable of and enjoy our footage in an entirely new way.

We are pleased to share our new film called Footsteps as inspiration to others. Check it out here!